Great post from Arthur Garson at Chron.com titled "Setting the Health Care Record Straight" - where he addresses some of the prevalent myths associated with the problems in the US healthcare industry
The myths as detailed:
1) There's no money - there is it's just wasted (by everyone)
2) New Plan = Government Run Healthcare - no they are not but they are trying to provide more universal coverage.
On the issue of "free" healthcare this is not a simple problem/solution - see the experience in Hawaii whose experiment in offering "free" healthcare to low income families has been suspended as it ran out of money after 7 months.
3) You can't Change it (third rail in politics) - as another poster pointed out there is now sufficient interest/incentive to fix the problems not least of all driven by the economic problems.... American has been and will continue to be an innovator. As a good friend of mine Dr Bruce Merrifield shared with me recently in a paper on global warming and Integrated Patterns of Civilization "about 90% of all recorded scientific knowledge has been generated over just the most recent 30 years, a knowledge base that will likely double again in the next ten years".
I am an optimist like Dr Merrifield and take the view "The current explosion of learning and experimentation now extends to all fields of knowledge with consequences for the future that may be incalculable and certainly under appreciated"
I have no doubt we will find solutions to these issues and many others - our rate of innovation and knowledge sharing is increasing daily and the world is full of latent genius. We just need the incentive and I think recent difficulties and the level of focus are helping provide a spotlight to focus our minds and innovations on solving these issues.
The myths as detailed:
1) There's no money - there is it's just wasted (by everyone)
2) New Plan = Government Run Healthcare - no they are not but they are trying to provide more universal coverage.
On the issue of "free" healthcare this is not a simple problem/solution - see the experience in Hawaii whose experiment in offering "free" healthcare to low income families has been suspended as it ran out of money after 7 months.
3) You can't Change it (third rail in politics) - as another poster pointed out there is now sufficient interest/incentive to fix the problems not least of all driven by the economic problems.... American has been and will continue to be an innovator. As a good friend of mine Dr Bruce Merrifield shared with me recently in a paper on global warming and Integrated Patterns of Civilization "about 90% of all recorded scientific knowledge has been generated over just the most recent 30 years, a knowledge base that will likely double again in the next ten years".
I am an optimist like Dr Merrifield and take the view "The current explosion of learning and experimentation now extends to all fields of knowledge with consequences for the future that may be incalculable and certainly under appreciated"
I have no doubt we will find solutions to these issues and many others - our rate of innovation and knowledge sharing is increasing daily and the world is full of latent genius. We just need the incentive and I think recent difficulties and the level of focus are helping provide a spotlight to focus our minds and innovations on solving these issues.
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